State of Concept

The hallmark of Loukia Alavanou’s work is the collaging of sounds and imagesanything from photographs and disembodied cartoon characters to newsreel and film-noir clipsinto incongruous compositions that expose the mechanics of the media in constructing history and manipulating our perception of reality. Her show “Towards New Horizons,” curated by iLiana Fokianaki, presented four exemplary videos, produced between 2005 and 2013, alongside a new installation.

Alavanou’s virtual reality installation New HorizonsPilot, 2018, is a stereoscopic counterpoint to the future predicted by the public relations documentary To New Horizons, 1940, produced by General Motors to tout the Futurama exhibition designed by Norman Bel Geddes for the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair. The slick original, described in the curatorial text, extols the benefits of progress illustrated by a